Wales and England do not always instinctively agree on rugby issues but this week is different. Both teams know victory at Twickenham would put them in pole position to win this year's Six Nations title and send a significant message to the wider world. "Any team that can beat this Welsh side in this form puts down a massive marker," acknowledged England's full-back Ben Foden. "Wales must be considered one of the top three or four teams in the world. If you can beat them in this competition with so much at stake it'll give us the boost of confidence to really take it to the next teams we play."

Foden will probably be among only four starting survivors from the England XV who achieved an impressive win over the same opponents in Cardiff 12 months ago. Much has happened in the intervening period but Foden is adamant that a less experienced England, under temporary management having bombed out of the World Cup in the quarter-finals, can once again emerge victorious against opponents who almost reached the final and have already beaten Ireland and Scotland this month.

"We have massive belief we can do big things in this competition … we're confident we can go and win the title," said Foden, hoping for a happier personal experience than he enjoyed against Italy in Rome. "To beat the favourites and be three from three would put us in a good situation but the same can be said for them. It's a big crunch game. First and foremost we want to make Twickenham a fortress. They're going to have a difficult afternoon ... we've done a lot of work on areas we can exploit and areas where we think they're going to attack us. We've used our fallow week very wisely in terms of analysing them. Hopefully we will cause a few surprises this weekend."

The 26-year-old Foden, who was born in the England-Wales border town of Chester, also believes the smaller English backline can nullify the big Welsh backs who have enjoyed such success in the tournament to date. The likes of Jamie Roberts, George North and Alex Cuthbert will have a clear height advantage but Foden insists England's tacklers will not make the mistake of going too high. "If you look at all the games where Wales have broken through and scored tries it is because someone has gone high on a big strong ball-carrier. It has enabled them either to get the offload going or carry a bit farther and put someone else into space. We'll be looking to chop them low and get them down to the ground quickly.

"We don't want to be getting into an arm-wrestle with guys like Roberts and North and Jonathan Davies. They're very strong ball-carriers and they can shrug you off. We don't want to be giving them easy metres so we need to be going in low and chopping them nice and early. We need to get our back-row into the game as well. If we're chopping these guys down before the gain line we can really utilise that sort of field position. We will definitely be looking to take it to them at the weekend. In the last two weeks we've been working hard on our attack ... we want to expose them and challenge them defensively and we're confident that our defence can shut them down."